The Expansion Sale: Four Must-Win Conversations to Keep and Grow Your Customers - Hardcover

by Erik Peterson (Author), Tim Riesterer (Author)

Proven customer engagement approaches for winning in the most important moments driving profitability and growth--customer retention and expansion

Industry analysts report that up 70-80% of business growth comes from existing customers.

So why are you still investing mainly in attracting new customers? And, leaving renewals and upsells to chance? Or, worse yet, using a one-size-fits-all approach to acquisition as you do for expansions?

The Expansion Sale provides everything you need to seize the competitive edge in the customer-success space. Authors Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer explain how the buying psychology of existing customers differs from that of new customers, and show how to adapt your commercial engagement strategies accordingly. They provide clear, easy-to-apply messaging frameworks for creating and delivering winning conversations in the four must-win commercial moments of customer success: ensuring renewals, communicating price increases, increasing upsells, and apologizing effectively for service failures.

Back Jacket

"When looking to accelerate growth, companies tend to focus on net new acquisitions, ignoring the unmined gold they already have in their current customer base. This book provides sales, marketing, and customer service leaders a tested, proven, and practical approach for tapping into this deep vein of potential revenue."
- TIFFANI BOVA, Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce and bestselling author of Growth IQ

"Tim and Erik and their company, Corporate Visions, have devoted the last several years to conducting some of the most rigorous studies ever done on B2B selling, and they've uncovered some compelling insights into precisely what's different about the selling motion for an existing customer vs. an acquisition prospect. In this book, they turn those insights into tactics that every company should build into their customer engagement and expansion plans."
- NICK MEHTA, CEO of Gainsight and Author of Customer Success

"The Expansion Sale by Corporate Visions will be a must read for strategic and key account managers. Expanding the business relationship is their most significant role...across all client levels and departments! These four conversations are a fundamental part of an account manager's everyday responsibilities."
- DENISE FREIER, President and CEO, Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA)

"This book is critical for anyone in a B2B organization who interacts with existing customers. The research shows there is a distinct difference in the way marketing and sales must communicate with existing customers in critical buying conversations."
- DR. NICK LEE, Professor of Marketing, Warwick Business School, and Corporate Visions Research Partner

"This ground-breaking book details original research around how to optimize existing customer messaging in a variety of familiar situations that have received surprisingly little attention in the past. Importantly, the book translates these studies into practical guidance for executives seeking to drive more growth from existing customers."
- NICK DE CENT, Editor-in-chief, The International Journal of Sales Transformation

Author Biography

Erik Peterson is CEO of Corporate Visions, a $70 million customer conversation consulting and training company. He has delivered consulting engagements, keynotes, and messaging skills workshops to more than 10,000 marketing and sales executives in over 13 countries, and his teams have executed this work in 56 countries around the world.

Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer of Corporate Visions conducts original, exclusive research in the area of decision-making science and its use in B2B marketing, sales and customer success. He partners with leading academic researchers in the area of behavioral science, persuasion and negotiations to test and develop the concepts that are then proven with clients in real-world application.